Feature Set:  

CYBERsitter comes with a lot of useful features that allow you to decide just what kind of protection your computer needs and where. Not only does CYBERsitter have more features than any other program in this review, but the CYBERsitter interface allows you to customize a lot of options that aren’t customizable in other programs. For instance, CYBERsitter was the only product to include a basic email–filtering feature, even though this feature will not replace a typical Spam filtering product.

The parent (or administrator, depending on the situation) has almost complete control over what kind of content is viewable. And CYBERsitter does an excellent job of foiling attempts to change the settings by unauthorized people. Your kids most likely won’t be able to hack this one.

CYBERsitter offers excellent ways to track and monitor surfing on the computer discreetly. The program creates reports about the types of sites that are visited, keeps records of IM conversations and then emails all of the information to you on a daily basis. This can help you keep track of exactly what happens on your computer day-by-day.

If you are looking for this kind of discreet monitoring, you will especially like CYBERsitter because you can monitor the program from a remote location (anywhere with an Internet connection) and even change the settings on the filter from outside your home. This feature is useful if you are gone for long periods of time and need to change the filtering options instantaneously while away.

There are 30 available categories of content that CYBERsitter can monitor and filter. These include the standards, like sex, drugs and pornography, along with quite a few of the uncommon ones, like gambling, cults, file sharing and free email sites. You can select the ones you are concerned about and CYBERsitter will do the rest.

One useful function that is available that none of the other products have, is the ability to scan your hard drive for objectionable material. It will also find any types of spying programs that may have been installed on your computer, either inadvertently or intentionally.

Ease of Use:  

As we mentioned in the introduction, using CYBERsitter wasn’t the smoothest process, though it is very effective at what it does. It was a little tricky to get the browser to work in conjunction with the filtering. Making sure you have the correct settings with the “Default to Active Filtering Mode” turned on will make the application work smoothly. While frustrating, these problems weren’t troublesome enough to ruin our experience. If you make a few adjustments to your browser, you likely won’t have any problems.

Ease of Installation:  

CYBERsitter was easy to install. There were some problems during the setup process while trying to enter an email address. Our system locked up. Later, after reading the documentation, it was discovered that the email notification system doesn’t work in Windows 2000. This is a minor bug. This problem did not appear when running on Windows XP.

Filtering Effectiveness:  

CYBERsitter is one of the best products we could find when it comes to filtering effectiveness. CYBERsitter puts all the features to good use and provides a solid defense against objectionable content. CYBERsitter will only block the specific categories of content that you select, so you don’t have to worry about it accidentally blocking all categories.

CYBERsitter did tend to overblock a little with the categories we did select. For most people, this is preferable to underblocking and allowing content through that should have been filtered. We found very few problems with underblocking.

CYBERsitter uses a database of objectionable sites and word patterns to filter the sites you visit. Just a database of URLs can be inadequate, so the word pattern identification is very important for keeping the filtering up-to-date. CYBERsitter relies on identifying content instead. Having said this, CYBERsitter won’t be very reliable at identifying offensive pictures if the rest of the content on the site is okay. But most Internet filters struggle in this regard.

CYBERsitter is especially useful for instant messaging and email because it has more finesse than the average Internet filter. Instead of blocking anything that doesn’t meet expectations, CYBERsitter has the option to simply blank out bad words or offensive phrases so you can still read the rest of the email or conversation. This is especially useful for communicating with people who occasionally use offensive language but who remain civil for the most part of conversation.

One of the few drawbacks that could be repaired is the lack of notification when some sites are blocked. Sometimes, the CYBERsitter filter simply brings up a blank browser page when it blocks something, and other times it displays a “Page Not Found” message. While some would argue that this is a good feature because children won’t even know they are being filtered, this feature can still be extremely annoying for adults who know where they are navigating. You’ll have to decide if this will be an issue for you.

CYBERsitter is one of the most effective programs you will find for filtering offensive content on the Internet, in emails or in IM conversations. CYBERsitter takes an impressive list of features and combines it with superior customizability and effective filters to create an effective Internet filter for your home. You won’t be disappointed with CYBERsitter's performance.